The Education 3.0 Honeytrap

The temptation to view Web 3.0 technologies and the digital frontier as realms ready to dive into to find solutions to education's most fundamental problems is almost immeasurable. From virtual reality to blockchain, these new tools open gateways to enabling new connections, communities, and creative endeavors to flourish. I ask though: is the education industry prepared?

I say no. Let's ask some fundamental questions to explore why:

1. Have the problems of access to new technologies been solved?

2. Have the problems of access to education as a right been solved?

3. Have the problems of administrative bloat and burden been solved?

4. Have the problems of learner excitement for learning been solved?

5. Have the problems of educator dignity and quality of life been solved?

A quick web search for things like digital deserts, graduation rates, teacher satisfaction, standardized testing overwhelm or many other topics will reveal the answers are no, no, no, no, and no. These are just the first five questions that come to my head while writing this piece, and the answers continue to be no when I think about graduate professional readiness, the youth's view of teaching as a career option, and opportunity equity across various demographics.

So why do I call it a honeytrap? Because the impulse to believe new technologies will solve these problems can take on an almost romantic feel. Grand visions of all students connected on the digital information highway exploring far off worlds and creating stunning visual art are needed in the long run, but they will be on very shaky footing if these are built in the educational world of today. The instability of such visions becomes even more pronounced when we face the reality that the education community is overall not the most technologically innovative group. 

I should take some time to mention that I am someone with one of those grand visions. I am working to make it happen, but am also determined based on my research, experience, and ideals to ensure that I do not take grand leaps without first building bridges for those who need to walk, run, or crawl to get there as well. I'm blessed with technological comfort and courage to explore, break, get frustrated, and then figure out new technologies. I'm also blessed with the time to do so. Many are not so fortunate, and those educators who do not have the time or energy to do so are those we need to be most focused on empowering. 

Teachers serving in classrooms today know the problems, are constantly coming up with solutions, and are not receiving their due for this work. I can attest to there being dozens of new learning management systems cropping up that do not actually solve anything. They are branded better than their predecessors, have greater access to capital, have made UI/UX improvements, provide better administrative capabilities for gathering analytics, or have inserted digital fixtures that replace an area of education that non-educators have a tendency to view as replaceable - the educator.

You'll notice something missing from the above list though, and that's any improvement or innovation of education itself. If the learning management system is an AI-enabled, mobile-responsive, VR-ready, multi-platform juggernaut that lives on the blockchain but still requires students to log in at a given time, be graded according to an overarching set of standards, study the same subjects, and progress at the same pace as their peers then the technology has changed but the educational experience hasn't. In short, a hypothetical TikTok for Education with LMS integration will not be as innovative as a teacher who has figured out how to include TikTok in their already enjoyable class experience. Unfortunately, that teacher will struggle to share their experience and in all likelihood will go uncompensated for doing so even if they can.

A teacher being willing to speak to a learner on their level, with empathy, and while expressing a genuine care for their wellbeing that the learner truly feels is worth more in their classroom than all of the money generated by the entire eLearning market growth from the pandemic. Full stop.

We need wholesale societal, industry-wide, global, and I argue existential change in education. I also call Education 3.0 a honeytrap for personal reasons. Please take 3 minutes to watch the video below for which I wrote the script in 2020 for Onyx Learner Academy and my ever-aspirational declaration of Onyx being the world's first Education 3.0 company:

I think I did a damn good job at the time, and the voiceover artist and video editor did even better. Here's the problem though, from time stamps 00:35-01:00. None of these things are really happening. Are education methods becoming more flexible and moving to learner-centric approaches? Are classrooms accommodating new technological advancements? Are learners being prepared for the modern workplace? I ask you again to consider the 5 questions we started with, and to continue with ones that I hope my writing have prompted.

In the 2 years since that video was made, we have seen the Zoomification of learning. That's mostly it. There are thousands, if not millions, of small projects being developed within schools to solve problems, startups being deployed to make the next AI-enabled, mobile-responsive, VR-ready, multi-platform juggernaut, and initiatives being launched to make sure the right people get their share of the pie from pandemic recovery government funding, but what have the learners themselves experienced? Zoomification at best, dropout and irreparable damage to their mental health at worst. On the money side, investors have already forecasted this and Crunchbase has projected 2022 venture capital investment has plummeted to half of what it was in 2021. I truly wonder whether education will recover from the triple punch of long term effects from the pandemic, the inevitable end of recovery funds from the government, and the misalignment between the need for a quick return on investment and education being a multi-year if not generational project.

Good lord this ended up more negative than I meant it to. I'm still optimistic, am working every day to make my views in this piece no longer be the case, but this is how I see it. I am still learning how to get buy-in for my projects and ideas, and there are a lot of them. I'm learning to be much more strategic on where I push back against what is and propose what could be. However, what I won't do is gloss up a situation I view as a threat to the continued survival of humanity, and that of the United States in particular. 

As a last note, you'll notice I'm not including references in this, and I won't be for many things in the future either unless I am specifically providing a breakdown of a specific publication. Why? Two main reasons:

1. I challenge folks to get more adept at searching for things online. Relying on a newsletter, your social media feed, webinars, or word of mouth are all insufficient as sole sources of information if you want to be a changemaker. Neither the algorithm nor your colleagues & peers know all. Practice finding the supporting information or find information that proves me wrong and let's talk about how we can combine our resources to make something better. Your supporting information may include things I didn't come across and buttress mutual agreement, or you may open my eyes wider and my next piece will be an update to this one.

2. The common citation methods are not helpful. Not only does "retrieved January 12, 2006" not provide useful information if you don't know how to search the internet's back archives, but the backlog of innovation sitting in the depths of academic libraries and/or never reaching the masses thanks to the legacy publication industry globally is nothing short of criminal to me and I won't encourage it at even the level of this blog. That's another story for another day though. 

If you won't take what I say seriously without proper in-text citations then we aren't on the same wavelength and I do wish you the best. If you want to know my qualifications and experiences, talk to me one to one and I'll be happy to engage in a discussion in good faith. You may also wait for my books to start coming out. Those will have citations, as well as a few of my more ambitious projects that are planned for early 2023 releases.

As always, Life is Good

-CK